Bosphorus

I mentioned Stephen MacKenna in my last entry. I now provide the final entry from his journal, dated June 15, 1909:

It is strange and saddening to find, when one sits with leisure and entire freedom of choice, that one has nothing whatever to put down, or nothing but the despairing statement of an utter emptiness. What sort of a thin life is it, what a chilly soul, that can give in twelve waking hours no thought or feeling that a man may write for his merely technical exercise? For a great part of our life we are merely animal or quite dead: immortality in another sphere does not seem so certainly a boon as would immortality during our present life. It may be that a good working guide to conduct might be framed on this ideal of living to the fullest here and now: it is likely that the soul seeking admission among the bodiless immortals in another world would be elected at once on the strength of having kept itself from death in days here below.